Carefully observing children's play is one of the most important things an educator needs to do in early childhood education. Here's why.
Observation is more than watching
It involves:
watching what the children are doing and who they are doing it with;
listening carefully to what the children are saying and how they are interacting with their friends;
identifying the children's interests, ideas, what they already know and what they can do.
Another way to gather information about children is to use the paperwork they keep on the child at the Centre eg: Doctor's reports; letters from their parents. It is really important to talk to parents about their children because the parents know the children best. See the blog post on Engaging Families for some ideas on how to build relationships with parents.
Observation helps educators to better understand children – their needs, how they learn, their lives. It is used by educators to help them plan more teaching and learning experiences, through what is called the Planning Cycle which we will learn about in another blog post.
Let's use Kate's Dinosaur Cubby Experience as an example.
Here are some of the questions Kate could ask herself when observing the children playing in the cubby:
Who plays in it?
What are they playing?
Are they alone or with friends?
What are they saying?
How long were they playing?
Kate can also ask the following questions of the children:
What do you think of the cubby?
What can we add to the cubby?
Would you like to build a cubby?
When observing children it is a good idea to either write down what you see or hear or if this is a bit awkward to take a video of the children playing and then watch it back to write down what you notice. You can also take photos of the children as a little prompt and to use in documentation. Talk about what you have observed with the other educators in the room. We will learn later about documentation and it is a good habit to record your observations to help with documentation.
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